game_design_snacksfandomcom-20200213-history
Slow Character Movement - Creates Impatience in the Player
With the presence of expansive environments and beautiful art, many games encourage the player to explore their surroundings. This helps sell the realism of the virtual world when done right, as it can feel as limitless as the real world. A feature that can ruin this aspect of design is when the movement of the player’s avatar is too slow. This results in a frustrated impatience in the player because it feels like it takes forever to get anywhere. The idea of exploring the environment becomes more of a chore than a treat because the shear amount of time required to do so. Examples No Man's Sky No Man’s Sky is a game where the main interest is in the exploration of new worlds. This is made difficult when the player is on foot, given the fact that their walk speed feels too slow. Everything else that is capable of motion in the game moves at a greater speed than the player, which increases this feeling. After a time, this movement speed starts to take away from the immersion of exploring the environment. The player gets bored because it takes too long to get from Point A to Point B. Virginia In the story-driven indie game Virginia, the player is often forced to move very slowly through the environment, potentially creating a sense of boredom and impatience for the player. The story does not require fast movement often, but the speed at which the player is forced to move for the entirety of the game can become frustrating and pull the player out of the narrative. The slow movement may even discourage players from exploring and enjoying the environment because of the movement speed. Albion Albion is an MMO with really large maps. Getting from one city to another is insane! The maps are so big that even on mounts the player is takes ages to get anywhere. On top of that if you carry too much items your player becomes even slower! One of the reason why i quite that game was because i spent so much time just trying to get from point A to point B. there is fast travel in the game but it is broken. Fast Travel doesn't allow you to travel if you're carrying items. Overall, Fast travel sucks in this game. IL World of Warcraft Without the use of mounts or quick travel, getting around some of World of Warcraft's extensive areas can be painfully slow and tedious. Due to this, many players attempt to get through the first 20 levels are quickly as possible and a mount is almost always the first major purchase the player makes to combat this problem. Blizzard even lowered the level at which you get your first mount from 40 to 20 due to player complaints and a noticeable effect where players would stop playing in the early levels because they were 'bored'. Ni No Kuni Ni No Kuni offers an open world aspect when traveling through. However the player has only one travel speed an makes for long periods of boring travel from one city to another. There was too much time spent wandering around and not accomplishing any goals.